Yahoo Finance Why do some job adverts put women off applying?
A job advert is the very first impression you get of a company and the position on offer – so getting the wording right is important.
But it’s not as simple as just describing the job, the ideal candidate and the employer. Gender bias and the way we use words in job listings can have a serious impact on the number of women who apply.
Specifically, the inclusion of certain words in job descriptions that are regarded as more “masculine” can lead to fewer women putting themselves forward for positions – particularly senior roles in male-dominated professions.
Last year, research by TotalJobs found that out of 75,000 job ads, 478,175 words were thought to carry a gender bias, with ads for social care and admin roles most likely to use female-biased language, at 87% and 67% respectively.
Sales and management roles were among the ads most likely to use male-biased language, such as lead, analyse and confident. The most commonly-used female-gendered words in UK job descriptions included support, responsible, understanding and dependable.
In 2016, the company Textio – which detects online bias for companies recruiting – carried out research that analysed how vocabulary can influence who applies for a job.
According to the findings, the average job ad contains twice as many phrases that have a masculine tone, which leads to more men applying for specific roles. While phrases like “transparent” and “in touch with” were considered more feminine, words like “fearless” and “enforcement” were seen as appealing to male candidates.
The issue is also linked to women feeling they “belong” at a company, a 2011 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found. “Women reported greater anticipated belongingness within occupations that were femininely than masculinely worded,” the researchers stated. “Men displayed only a slight preference for masculinely worded advertisements, and gendered wording did not affect men’s anticipated feelings of belongingness.”
According to the study, this is because masculine wording “primarily serves to keep women out of the areas that men typically occupy” – rather than vice versa.
It’s not just the wording of the job listing, but what it includes – or rather omits. Research published in 2018 by the job website Indeed found that when job ads for leadership positions omit salary information, the median gender pay gap is typically 7.2% worse.
“Employers need to win the trust of potential recruits, and transparency can be one of the most effective ways to achieve this. The data gives us further insight around salary information and how median pay gaps are worse in leadership roles than at other levels when pay is not disclosed,” says Paul Wolfe, senior vice-president of human resources at Indeed.
“The findings show that choosing words carefully can have a positive impact on inclusive hiring and gender pay equality, but it’s the words employers omit that can also have an impact – especially when it comes to the pay gap in leadership positions.”
Ensuring a fair job description makes business sense, too. “Unemployment in the UK is at a record low and competition for staff is increasing,” Wolfe adds. “Taking gendered language out of postings may help jobseekers to see possibilities they may not have considered before, and so diversify and widen the talent pool.”
The impact of gender bias in job adverts is far-reaching. In regards to gender equality, the TotalJobs research shows that there is a distinct male-bias in adverts for senior positions, while supporting roles are described using feminine words. Female employees are discouraged from higher-level positions, widening the gender pay gap.
Gendered wording also affects the type of jobs women apply for. Male-focused industries include science, marketing and sales, while female-biased adverts are common within administration, housekeeping and social care – typically lower paid professions.
Companies are also taking practical steps to address the problem, including using technology to comb through their job ads and detect any bias. The firm Textio, for example, uses artificial intelligence to look over job descriptions and highlight any problematic terms, before suggesting alternatives.
Another recruitment tech company, TalVista, assesses job descriptions and highlights “discouraging” terms in red and “inviting” terms in green, before scoring the text with a thumbs up or down.
Using tech to eliminate gendered wording doesn’t have to be expensive either, or limited to tech giants like Microsoft. There are also free online tools that automatically scan job descriptions for biased language, such as the Gender Decoder for Job Ads or the online service by Applied. Simply checking your job ads and using gender-neutral language might just help level the playing field.
